Biography

American writer, professor, critic and scholar. He received a Doctorate in 1953 and was a Professor at Rutgers and Yale from 1959. His first book in 1955, "The American Adam," was followed by "The Picaresque Saint" in 1959. Noted as a refreshingly discursive critic, he also had articles published in "Trials of the Word."

A native of Chicago, Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis is the son of Leicester and Beatrix (Baldwin) Lewis. He attended the English School in Switzerland in 1929-1930. From there he went on to Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated in 1935. Lewis earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard in 1939 and his Master of Arts at the University of Chicago in 1941. During World War II he served in the British Eighth Army engaged mainly in intelligence work.

After the war, Lewis taught English at Bennington College, 1948-1950 and was a visiting lecturer at Smith College, 1951-9152. The University of Chicago awarded him his Ph.D. in 1953. He was at Princeton from 1952-1954 as Hodder Fellow and then as resident fellow in creative writing. From 1954 to 1959 he taught at Rutgers University as professor of English. In 1959 he went to Yale as a visiting lecturer and remained there as professor of English and American studies. He has traveled a great deal in Europe, including a stint as Fulbright lecturer at the University of Munich.

"The American Adam," title and theme of his first book, 1955, explores the idea of the American as a new kind of man in a new world. "The Picaresque Saint,"1959, portrays a similar archetypal figure of our paradoxical age. A collection of Lewis’ magazine articles was published in 1965 as "Trials of the Word."

R. W. B. Lewis is an important critic said to have "a worldly wisdom and maturity of mind which enable him to speak with a sometimes positively disturbing authority." In 1958 he received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for "creative work in literature," and he has a doctorate from Wesleyan University, 1961. He serves as literary consultant to Universal Pictures.